Affordable SEO: 10 Budget-Friendly SEO Tactics to Increase Your Traffic

SEO can be scary for small businesses, especially when they have to compete with large players in their industry. Even worse, affordable SEO for a small business seems to be a contradiction in terms.

So what are you to do?

Invest massively in PPC ads?

Sure, that works if you want quick results. But those results will disappear as soon as you stop investing in ads.

If you’re in it for the long run, SEO is still your best bet and the gift that keeps on giving.

And yes, there is such a thing as an affordable SEO strategy.

In fact, this post is fueled by a question that we keep on getting at Idunn: “How can I do SEO on a limited budget?”

Almost all of our copywriting clients have asked this at one point. Luckily, we already have the experience needed to come up with a great SEO strategy on a budget.

Below are some of the techniques we use to keep SEO affordable, yet effective.

Affordable SEO Tactics for Small Businesses

Here’s the major problem with SEO: it takes time to work. Even if you were to have an unlimited budget, you still wouldn’t be able to rank high instantly. That’s what Google AdWords are for.

Ask your average so-called affordable SEO expert about how to rank high fast and you’ll end up with a black-hat SEO strategy on your hands.

Will it happen?

Yes, it will.

Will it last?

Absolutely not.

Quite the opposite in fact: while budget-friendly, black hat techniques will get your website penalized by Google. And when search engines shove you under a virtual rock, it will take ages to get out.

Think about it this way: if cheap and fast black hat SEO techniques worked, why would people invest millions in white hat techniques?

Image via Solve

Yes, good SEO takes time. But if you hire SEO copywriters worth their salt, the results won’t just be long-lasting, but also worth every penny.

Here’s how we do it at Idunn.

1. Write Dang Good Content

Great writing helps you rank high. And it’s the best type of affordable SEO.

Even if you were to write with complete disregard to the technical aspects of SEO (though I’d never recommend that), you would still get far.

Why?

Glad you asked.

• Great Writing Is Long-Form

The best pieces of content go in-depth and explore a topic from every possible angle. They offer a brief history, a backstory – everything needed for the reader to get the full picture.

Thus, you end up with long-form content. And, according to CoSchedule and many other studies, long-form content ranks highest.

Image via CoSchedule

Better yet, when you write long-form pieces you get a chance to insert your keyword naturally as many time as needed. You also get to use LSI keywords to boost your relevance – and we all know that search engines are all about relevance.

• Great Pieces of Content Get more Social Shares

While a direct link between social shares and page ranking has never been proven indisputably, one thing remains certain: the bigger your social influence, the higher your ranking.

Image via CognitiveSEO

At the very least, this matters because more eyes on your content mean more opportunities for backlinking – an undeniably strong SEO juice.

Speaking of which:

• Great Writing Earns You Backlinks

No one will ever link to your content if it’s poorly written or brings little to no value to the reader. Unless you pay them to. But we’re talking about affordable SEO tactics here, right?

Plus, even if you pay for high-DA websites to link to yours, what happens when the readers get there and are disappointed? That’s right: your bounce rate increases and you get no sales. All you get is useless traffic.

Earning your backlinks through great content is a whole different story. People who get to your websites are delighted and they stick around. Maybe they subscribe to your email newsletter, maybe they make a purchase.

Either way, you win fans, leads or customers. And that’s what SEO should be all about – not just meaningless traffic.

Need help with great writing that can improve your SEO without a major investment? Talk to our skilled copywriters and let’s get you all the traffic and leads you need.

2. Update Older Posts and Pages

Just in case you caught the long-form train later than your competitors, updating all old short blog posts and web pages can do wonders for your SEO with a minimal budget.

Why not write something else altogether, you ask?

Well, because your older pages already have a standing with Google. New pages and posts take time to index. Older ones that you update stand a bigger chance of obtaining a better ranking with a minimal effort.

More importantly, take a look at all your older posts and check to see if your links are still working. This goes for both inbound and outbound linking. Whenever Google bots stumble upon a broken link, this raises a major red flag.

Yes, this will be time-consuming. But you don’t need a top SEO expert to perform this check, so you can easily chalk it up under affordable SEO strategies.

Since we’re speaking of links:

3. Add Inbound and Outbound Links to all Your Pieces

Inbound links (with an anchor identical to the keyword your older post needs to rank for) are the best way to signal Google bots of your content’s relevancy.

For instance, this is the appropriate place for me to link to my post on on-page SEO, which also mentions inbound and outbound linking.

See what I did there?

I placed the link on the phrase I want that post to rank for.

Cost: 0.

If this is not an affordable SEO tactic, I don’t know what is.

Moving on to outbound linking: don’t be afraid that linking to other websites will drain yours of the SEO juice you so badly need. This is never the case.

On the contrary, authority content, the kind that goes in-depth and long form has to have as many references as possible. By adding links to other high-DA websites, you tell Google bots that your content is well-researched and valuable.

4. Improve Your Website’s Loading Speed

It’s been almost a decade since Google made site speed a ranking factor. If you think of it, it’s only normal: no one wants to wait for ages for a page to load.

Image via Imgur

Even more, given that mobile browsing has become ubiquitous, speed is even more important.

Luckily, it’s also a very affordable SEO tactic. You don’t need to redesign your entire website. Just ask your developer to take a look at the scripts that are slowing it down and fix them.

Pro tip: check your loading speed here. If it’s more than 4 seconds, you should definitely contact your developer.

But you know what? Do it anyway. If one second cost Amazon $1.6 billion in sales, shaving it off your loading time can do wonders for you.

5. Make Your Website Mobile Responsive

…if you haven’t yet.

Not doing so will cost you all the mobile traffic. Plus, your website won’t appear as a result in searches made from a mobile device.

Mobile traffic accounts for more than 60% of internet usage. This means that you could be losing 60% of your visitors, leads and potential clients.

Even more, your website will be severely penalized by Google.

Remember: affordable SEO starts with fixing what’s wrong with your website first and foremost.

6. Optimize for Long-Tail Keywords

Nothing drains your SEO budget more than trying to optimize for high-volume, short keywords. Picture this: you’re a small business selling wedding dresses and you try to rank for “wedding dresses”.

How easy do you think that would be?

Here’s the cruel truth: not at all.

You will need to invest massively to rank for such a phrase.

The worst part about it?

You don’t even need it.

Yes, you read that right.

As a small business looking for an affordable SEO strategy, you need to consider what will get you clients through your virtual door. Generic keywords won’t.

When people search for wedding dresses, they’re rarely looking to buy right now. They are in the “awareness” phase at the most. Or perhaps they’re just daydreaming.

You see, I’m a major proponent of CRO copywriting. CRO stands for Conversion Rate Optimization. In other words, content that sells.

And I strongly believe that you don’t have to sacrifice SEO for it. If you hire the right freelance copywriters you can have both.

Great copywriters and content strategists will save you precious dollars from your SEO budget and bring you customers by advising against such keywords. Instead, they will recommend you optimize for long-tail keywords, typically used by people in more advanced stages of their buyer journey.

“A-line beige wedding dress”, “handmade ivory wedding dress”, “lace and silk wedding dress” are all better (and cheaper) bets that plain, old “wedding dress”.

You see? You CAN have it all – affordable SEO and conversions!

All you need to do is forget about search volume and find what works for you.

7. Optimize for Local Keywords

There are few more affordable SEO tactics than going after your neighbors and leveraging the power of local search.

Following up on the example above, all you need to do is add your location to the keyword. You would get: “A-line beige wedding dress in Tampa”, “Portland handmade ivory wedding dress”, “Columbus, MT lace and silk wedding dress” and, of course, the keyword to rule them all “Tulsa wedding dress boutique”.

These are not only easy to rank for, but also the kind of keywords that bring you customers. When someone searches for a certain type of wedding dress AND adds a location to their query, it’s clear that they intend to buy. Soon.

Can you hear the ca-ching sound?

Need help with choosing the right keywords? Our copywriting services include keyword research, as well as competitor research – a turnkey solution to help your rankings soar.

8. Use Your Keyword in all The Right Places

Now that you know how to find the right keywords for your small business SEO strategy, let’s see where you should place them.

Obviously, they should be scattered all over your content, but there are a few key places they shouldn’t be missing from.

1. Title
2. Meta description
3. First paragraph (or the first 100 words – you need to make the subject clear from the very beginning)
4. One or more of the subheadings
5. URL (also, keep your URL as short as possible)
6. Image alt tags

Remember to add your main keyword in all these six places and your secondary ones in as many of them as possible.

9. Use LSI Keywords

Keyword stuffing is a big no-no. In other words: don’t repeat your main keyword ad nauseam. It doesn’t just make the text unreadable, but it can also get you a hefty penalty from Google.

How else can you boost your SEO on a budget?

With LSI keywords, of course.

LSI stands for Latent Sematic Indexing. In a nutshell, it is a method used to determine correlations and connections between terms.

For instance, my post on affordable SEO for small businesses uses a lot of terms that are commonly met when speaking about SEO: keywords, indexing, ranks, DA, copywriter and more.

When all of these words appear together, they give Google a better idea about the topic of my content. And if the ratio of words related to the main topic is satisfactory, then my post will rank higher.

Search bots use this to avoid confusion. For instance, how can you tell if a blog post entitled “10 Tips to Make the Most out of Your Windows” is about the operating system or the windows of your home?

Well, you look for other words like “operating system”, “Windows 10”, “Bill Gates”, “Microsoft” or “window panes”, “window treatments”, “PVC” and so on.

Pro tip: nothing says affordable SEO quite like COMPLETELY free tools. The one I use to generate LSI keywords is LSI Graph.

10. Sneak a Peek into Your Competitors’ Strategy

Tools like SEMrush can help you find out what keywords your competitors are ranking for. Yes, it’s a paid tool, but well-worth a part of your SEO budget.

Alternatively, you can also look for gaps in your competitors’ SEO strategy. What subjects have they failed to cover? What subjects did they cover, but did a poor job of it (and you can do a better one)?

Answer these two questions and you’ll have a great start to your editorial calendar.

Budget-Friendly SEO Tactics for Small Businesses – Conclusions

We are all looking for ways to pinch yet another penny. I know very well how bootstrapping works for small businesses and/or startups. This is why I came up with this guide.

However, I need to add one last word of caution: don’t let your budget dictate all your decisions. Looking for affordable SEO services without adding any other criteria will most definitely lead you to scammers and/or black hat SEO “experts”.

Need help with the design or implementation of your budget-friendly SEO strategy? We helped dozens of companies reach their business goals with limited budgets (we love challenges!) and we could do the same for you.

Fill in the form below and we’ll get back to you ASAP!